


In the Blood

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Between the Series, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode: s03e03 The Earth Queen, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Mother-Son Relationship, aftermath of war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 22:58:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11976840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: She is eight years old when she watches the Fire Nation burn her village down and make her a refugee, and she is eighteen when she watches them march into Ba Sing Se. So excuse her, Yin thinks, if she finds it difficult to trust the Fire Nation thereafter.Some things, like war and family, stick with you in your blood.Yin, from the War to when Bolin and Mako come through her apartment door.





	In the Blood

She is eight years old when she watches the Fire Nation burn her village down and make her a refugee, and she is eighteen when she watches them march into Ba Sing Se. So excuse her, Yin thinks, if she finds it difficult to trust the Fire Nation thereafter. 

And she knows what they say, that the new Fire Lord, Zuko, is better than his father and grandfather and great-grandfather, is _different_ , that he’s even _friends_ with the Avatar. But she’s from the Earth Kingdom, knows the importance of family, how it sticks in your blood, even if all your relatives are gone. 

So she rolls her eyes rather than flood the shop with the rest of them when the Dragon of the West—that one-time Fire Nation Crown Prince and War Criminal, no matter what he did at the end of the war or what he calls himself now—deigns to come to the Lower Ring once a week to sell tea. She spits with something like disgust when she reads in the newspaper that the Fire Lord and the Avatar aren’t giving the colonies back to the Earth Kingdom, are instead going to try to build some _new_ Nation there. It’s theft, and it’s a disgrace, and as far as she’s concerned, any Earth Kingdom citizen that moves there is a traitor and ought to be ashamed.

When she’s twenty-five she meets Bohai, who feels the same, and they bond over this, being refugees, being Ba Sing Se citizens, being expected to just forgive the Fire Nation after everything and _hating_ that expectation. They marry the next year.

* * *

Family is important, it sticks in your blood, and after everything she hadn’t known her blood could flow like it does, that her heart could thump like it does when she has her sons, every time she looks at her sons. 

Chow, her oldest, is energetic, bubbly, bouncy—a non-bender like her, who as he grows, falls deeper and deeper in love with their city, even loves the Lower Ring—it’s home—even loves the fruit stand. Learns to nod when she and Bohai rant when the Fire Lord comes on diplomatic missions, when council members from the United Republic come for the same reason, when they slap his hand away when he asks for money to buy tea from the Dragon of the West. 

San, her younger son, is quiet, brooding. An Earthbender like his father, but without his father’s love for the Earth Kingdom or for Ba Sing Se. “Why do we have to live in this tiny, dingy apartment with all of Dad’s family?” he asks. “Why are we stuck in the Lower Ring?” And when she answers—because they were refugees, because there’s too many refugees in this city, because of the Fire Nation—he rolls his eyes. “It’s not the Fire Nation, Mom. It’s the Earth King that you love so much and the Dai Li that keep you here like slaves!”

He says: “Everyone else buys tea from the Dragon of the West, and they say it’s delicious. You can’t stop me.”

He says: “I’m not going to sell rotten fruit for the rest of my life, Dad! I’m going to make something of myself! I want to go somewhere where people aren’t going to tell me to stay in my place! In Republic City—”

She interrupts, says that the United Republic and its capitol city are theft, is a disgrace, some plot of the Fire Lord’s to keep some of their land and people and to keep the Earth Kingdom weak, that he’s tricked the Avatar into agreeing to. That any Earth Kingdom citizen who moves there is a traitor…

“A _traitor_ , Mom? Really? No, the _traitors_ are the Earth Queen and her pet Dai Li agents who oppress Earth Kingdom citizens. You’re just too brainwashed by hate because of the War, and you feel like you have to worship the ground that the royal family stands on because Earth King Kuei took you in as a refugee! But you can’t see that they—“

Yin yells that she doesn’t want to hear one more bad word about the Royal Family. 

“Fine,” responds San coolly. “You won’t.”

The next day, she learns what that means. The next day, she wakes up to find one less body in the apartment, a note from San saying he is leaving for Republic City and not to expect to hear from him again. She is forty-five years old, and she falls to her knees, wails. Family is important, it sticks in the blood, and it feels like San ripped her heart out, leaving a blood trail all the way across the Earth Kingdom to Republic City. 

He had left no address, so she writes the Earth Kingdom Councilman of Republic City. _Tell my son to come home, please tell him I’m sorry, tell him I don’t care about politics or the Fire Nation or the Earth Queen, I just want him home_. When the Councilman doesn’t respond, she writes to the other three, and then to the Avatar. _Please, please, I just want to see my son again._

She hears from none of them. 

The Dragon of the West is too old to come to the Lower Ring regularly anymore, but she writes to him too. _They say that you’re close to the Fire Lord. Please, he helped found the United Republic. Please, can he find my son. Please, my son is gone, and it’s my fault, and I’m afraid I’ve lost him forever. Please can you help._

The Dragon of the West _does_ come to the Lower Ring for her, and he is so old, and he looks so kindly, with eyes so full of sadness and inexplicable understanding, that she wonders how this man could be the one whom she called a war criminal. He pours her tea, sighs: “I know how painful the loss of a son feels. I wish there were more I could do to help. I will write to my nephew, but he has not been to Republic City for many years, and there are so many people there, I am not sure he will be able to…But I will write to him.”

She thanks him, bows. Receives a kind and apologetic letter from the Fire Lord, saying that he has reached out to his contacts, but they have no way of locating her son. He’s sorry. He wishes there was more he could do.

* * *

When she is seventy-eight years old, she finally receives a letter from Republic City. 

Yin cries out when she sees San’s cramped handwriting, puts her hand over her mouth as she reads it. San writes that he married a Fire Nation girl, that they have two wonderful sons whom he loves more than life itself, and that one of them is a Firebender. 

She knows why he tells her these things, even after all these years can hear San’s tone behind the words, how he is trying to twist her into guilt with them. But she _doesn’t care_ , she’s long since stopped caring about that. Yin looks at the photograph enclosed, of her San—so much older now, and _happy_ —of his wife and two boys that look exactly like him, wants to see them, to embrace, them to embrace _all_ of them…

She writes back: _I’m so happy for you_ and _I would love to meet them, your wife and children_ and _Please come home,_ and _Please bring them home._

He never visits, and she never gets a letter back.

* * *

When she is eighty years old, Bohai dies. 

She writes to San, begs him to come to the funeral.

He doesn’t come, and she doesn’t get a letter back.

* * *

When Yin is eighty-eight years old, Chow walks through the door dragging two young men who look so much like San, whom she recognizes from that ten-year-old photograph. “Is it true after all these, years?” she utters, hardly able to believe it. And, after her son introduces her, continues: “It is so wonderful to meet my long-lost grandchildren,” because it is, it _is_ , and if they are here San must also be here, she thinks, after over forty years, she will finally see her San again, finally hold him again, finally embrace his wife… “Where is San? And your mother?”

There is something wrong, Yin knows immediately, as she watches their faces fall. 

“Wait…” says the Earthbender. “You mean you don’t know?” and Yin braces herself for the worst.

She braces herself for the worst. But she is still unprepared to hear it when the Firebender breathes in an apparent attempt to make himself stoic, make his voice steady and tells her: “I’m sorry. They were killed when we were little.”

The world seems to crash down around her, and she doesn’t even notice the tears in her eyes, doesn’t even notice Chow standing up to comfort her, doesn’t even notice as they lead her to the table, as food is placed in front of her. Vaguely, she hears Chow tell her grandchildren about the fight that drove San away from them, thinks _it was my fault._

But her grandchildren are here now. San probably told his wife that his mother would hate her, probably thought that she would detest her Firebending grandson. And her son is not here; she cannot correct these misconceptions. But her grandchildren are here. She rises, tells them: “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

Once the three of them are alone in the bedroom, she produces the letter and the photo, fingers them both delicately before passing them to the boys. “This is the only letter we ever got from San. It says he married a beautiful girl from the Fire Nation and had two wonderful sons. He sent this picture of you all on his birthday.” She pauses, breathes, and then turns to the Firebender. “I’m so sad that I never got to meet your mother. But you have her eyes. I know by looking at you two that she must have been a wonderful bride for my boy.”

The Earthbender wipes away tears, and the Firebender seems to hesitate before removing his scarf—San’s scarf, the one he had worn in the photo—and draping it around her. “I’m sure they would want you to have this,” he says.

She smiles, and throws her arms around him, her beautiful Firebender who is so much like San. And his brother joins in, wrapping his arms around both of them. Later, she will think this is the moment—eighty years after she first became a refugee—that the War finally ended for her. But for now, she lets herself sit there holding her boy and with her boys holding her, lets herself feel something close to whole again for the first time in so many years. 

Family, after all, sticks in the blood.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


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